


Oscillation on the Pavement

by ceywoozle



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Scene, Anal Play, First Kiss, First Time, Frottage, M/M, Premature Ejaculation, The Empty Hearse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2014-04-21
Packaged: 2018-01-19 05:52:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1458268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceywoozle/pseuds/ceywoozle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night after Sherlock returns, John goes to see him at Baker Street and by some miracle nothing happens to stop him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [allonsys_girl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/allonsys_girl/gifts).



> This is a Tumblr prompt from anigrrrl2.

John looks at himself in the mirror and is almost unable to recognise the face that looks back. He stares, the white glare of the bathroom light highlighting every blemish, every scar, ever follicle and pore, every discolouration of his skin, every wrinkle and sag. He hates it. He's always hated this light. He doesn't understand why Mary doesn't change it. Maybe paint the walls. Something warmer. Something that doesn't make him feel like he's aged twenty years every morning. Surely she's noticed it, too? Surely it's not just him that looks like something dead shambling belatedly around, trying to figure out why everyone's giving him such strange looks as his chest gapes open and his entrails drag around at his feet?

“Late shift today?” Mary calls from the bedroom and John grunts. He is staring at himself in the mirror and he can't look away.

He hates the moustache with a sudden and alarming intensity.

“Did you hear me?” Mary again, mild irritation, but distraction, too. Probably reading. She started reading _The Da Vinci Code_ last week and is halfheartedly making her way through it, making scathing commentary as she goes, managing to simultaneously amuse and exasperate him. She's reading it on his recommendation and while he knows he's being ridiculous part of him wishes she would just pretend.

_You should be used to this,_ he thinks to himself and slams the thought down with a vicious mental kick.

God he hates that moustache.

“John?” Real annoyance this time. John sighs.

“Yeah?”

“Are you going to be late again, I asked.”

He thinks of his empty intray at work, the patient files neatly typed up and saved to the computer, all his calls made and his prescriptions written, his diagnoses and readings double checked and recorded. He thinks of his desk, completely clean and has been for weeks, for months. He thinks of the stack of paperbacks he's been reading every night in his office long after everyone else has gone home.

“Yeah,” he says. “Some files I've been putting off.”

He stares at himself and the stupid moustache that he suddenly hates and he wonders how he's never seen how ridiculous it is before. How he actually thought it was a good idea. He knows it ages him. He can see that now. What was he thinking? He already looks on the wrong side of fifty, especially with this light turning him sickly and white. He looks like a corpse, something dead for days, for months, and he imagines what Sherlock would say, bending over him, his coat sweeping around him and his eyes shifting in the light as they narrow. “Dead for at least two years,” he would say. “Middle aged, soldier, hands of a surgeon but hasn't performed surgery in years due to an intermittent tremor in his dominant hand caused by psychological trauma. History of PTSD and trust issues. This man has died from some sort of massive trauma. Internal bleeding in the chest cavity. It's a miracle he lasted as long as he did.”

He frowns because that's not what Sherlock sounds like. Sherlock's voice is lost in his head. He tries to call it to mind and can't.

He picks up the shaving cream.

Mary is talking. He can't hear her, doesn't really want to. Knows that's a bad thing. Tries to muster up the energy to at least care that he doesn't care.

He lets the foam unfurl in the palm of his hand, watching it gather in a stiff white coil. He keeps spraying until the can is half empty and it's overflowing from his hand, dropping in goblets into the basin of the sink. He stares at it for a moment.

_You can still change your mind._

He spreads the shaving cream across his face.

Mary is still talking.  _Jesus Christ why is she talking?_ He wants her to stop but he knows that's awful, that it's his own bad mood, his own exasperation with himself, and with an effort he drags the last vestiges of his patience around him.

“You what?” he calls.

“' I couldn’t help thinking what an amazing criminal he’d make if he turned his talents against the law.'”

_ Oh no no no no no no no. No. No. She's not. God please Jesus Christ say she is not. _

He steps out of the bathroom.

“Don't read that.”

“The famous blog, finally!” She's not even looking at him, reading the screen of her iPad and not even  _ looking at him _ as she strips him bare and he can feel the drag of each layer peeling away, coming off bloody and raw and jagged.  _ Not dead, _ he hears in his head and  _ ah, yes, there it is, _ that voice, that unforgettably, infuriating voice and all at once he wants to hit something again and part of him, a larger part than he wants to admit, doesn't care who or what it is. He just wants to hear something screaming that isn't himself.

But he doesn't. He doesn't. He shuts it down, instantly and ruthlessly because Mary doesn't deserve that side of him. She doesn't deserve any of the things he is.

“Come on, that's...”  _ That's what? Private? It's not though, is it? It's there for the world to see. Why not the woman you just proposed to? _

“...ancient history, yes I know,” she finishes for him and he can feel himself freeze because yes, sure, okay. It is. Right? It is, isn't it? “Except that it's not, though, is it, because he's...”

She looks up. For the first time since he came out of the bathroom she looks up and he sees the frozen amazement on her face, the amused disbelief and he knows that look, he remembers seeing it last night, too, vaguely, in between memories of his hands clutched around a long, pale neck and the wide eyes of Sherlock Holmes, laughing at him, mocking him, and he remembers being told how much he didn't matter while that look of amusement sat unheeded on Mary's face and he hadn't even noticed, he hadn't even cared then.

But now...he wants to be angry. He wants to be so angry but he doesn't know if he can. He doesn't know if he has the right. No one else thinks he does and they could be right, this could be his fault, this could be all him doing this to himself, to Sherlock, to Mary.  _ What is wrong with him? _

“What are you doing?” Mary asks and he wonders for a single fearful instant if he said any of that out loud, but then he remembers that he is standing there with shaving cream on his face and a razor in his hand and he can feel himself blush, his eyes slide guiltily away from hers.

“Having a wash.”

“You're shaving it off.”

She's grinning and he hates it.

“Well, you hate it.”

_ “Sherlock _ hates it.”

He feels a flash of anger again. Can't believe he's doing this. Defending his moustache and then defending its removal as if it made any difference, as if it changed anything about him, about Sherlock, about any of it.

“Apparently everyone hates it,” he says, because he doesn't want to say Sherlock's name. Doesn't want to hear it. Can't even think of Sherlock in the same space as Mary, sitting across the room now, hunched over in her bed, in  _ their _ bed, and reading words that were never meant for her, that through her lips, with the sound of her voice, have turned them, turned  _ him, _ into something absurd and shameful.

“Are you going to see him?” she asks.

“No,” he says, carefully, and his mouth feels numb around the word. “I'm going to work.”

“And after work are you going to see him?”

This should not bother him. This has no right to bother him. He rolls his eyes and he can feel how exaggerated the gesture is, can feel ever pull and drag of each individual muscle. He turns around, goes back in the bathroom because he doesn't want her to see.

Her voice follows him in. “Cor, I dunno,” she says. “Six months of bristly kisses for me and then His Nibs turns up.”

He wants to scream but he doesn't. He stares at his reflection, at the scars and the sags and the lines. “I don't shave for Sherlock Holmes.”

“You should put that on a t-shirt.”

“Shut up.” He hates himself immediately for saying it and he forces the edge of a smile, removing the sting.  _ It's alright. It's alright. Nothing wrong here. _

“Or what?”

He glances over and he sees her face, the same face she wore last night, mischief and good humour and yes, affection. He fell in love with that face. Or maybe that face fell in love with him.

“Or I'll marry you,” he says, and turns away again, unable to hold her gaze, unable to look at the smirk of satisfaction on her face. Instead, he stares at himself in the mirror and doesn't know if that's any better or not.

 


	2. Two

It is a horrible day. It is _the most_ horrible day, except for the eight hundred and seventy-three days that came before it. Except for those. But they _don't count_ anymore. They're _not important._ They _weren't real._ But in spite of Mary's laughter, in spite of Sherlock's amused bewilderment, the hideous clench at the pit of John's stomach hasn't gone away yet. The tight fist that sits behind his ribs, the steady ache of its convulsion gripping around itself, it's still there and it's not loosening, it's not letting go.

He goes through the motions, aware that somewhere else, somewhere that isn't here, there is a curly black head bobbing through the London crowds, a heavy woollen great coat flapping dramatically around corners. He hates himself for it, but he is waiting for the door of his office to open and for those verdigris eyes to glare at him in a sulk and demand to know when he's moving back in.

John doesn't want to forgive him. He thinks of last night. He thinks of the past eight hundred and seventy-three nights and he can feel the bile rushing up and stinging the back of his throat and he wants to be sick because he doesn't understand. He doesn't understand how he can still love the person who did this to him, who did this to him and  _laughed._ Who had no concept of what it was he had even done.

For the first time in months John thinks about St Bart's, that stupid coat flapping in the air behind that falling falling falling body like wings except not because they weren't wings, they weren't wings and Sherlock couldn't fly. He thinks of a white face and red blood and blank blue eyes that couldn't see him and he thinks of how he had let that happen, of how he had hadn't stopped it, hadn't even realised that there was anything to be stopped. He thinks of the months and months and months of nights, laying in bed and staring at the ceiling while his own voice played on an endless loop in his head.  _You machine you machine you machine you machine you machine you machine..._ He thinks of how angry he had been, at Sherlock, at himself, at Moriarty for taking away the one thing he thought he had, he thought he would always always have because he never thought this could end, because he couldn't think of it ending and John  _hates_ himself. He hates that he has let this happen. He hates himself for not being what Sherlock needed, for not being good enough, for not being there, for walking out, for letting himself be tricked again and again and again when he should have known, he should have stayed, he would have leapt off that roof himself if it could change things even for an instant, if he could have that one more second to  _do something._

But he doesn't get that. He  _never_ got that. And he pictures Sherlock's grinning, guilty face, a child caught out in a prank, and he hates himself all over again because how could he let himself be tricked again. Because that blood hadn't even been Sherlock's and those eyes hadn't been blank, had watched him, expressionlessly, passionlessly, as John crumpled and died on that pavement and he hadn't said a word. For eight hundred and seventy-three days Sherlock hadn't said a word and John thinks of all the words that he himself had said in that time, all the curses and the pleas and the days spent narrating his existence to an imaginary chair because he couldn't even manage to reconstruct those features in his head without seeing the blood over top of them. And the months passing when he couldn't hear him anymore either, when the exact timbre of Sherlock's voice started to fade and John could no longer piece together its tones, when one day he realised that when he was talking to the chair in his head he was talking only to himself, that the voice answering back was his own.

No. Those days were worse. Those days were more horrible. But now he's waiting while the rotation of patients file in and out and he's waiting, waiting for that next face to be Sherlock's because he's expecting it and dreading it and wanting it and so ashamed of himself, so ashamed of what he is and the unrelenting throb of his pulse in his own ears every time the door opens and he thinks  _this is it, this is him, this next one will be Sherlock because that absolute git just cannot listen, has never listened, has never understood and I swear I will kill him if he comes near me again,_ only to feel the sudden desperate disappoint well up because it's actually Mr Summerson, because it's Mrs Reeves, because it's Mary and that's the worst one because he actually hates her in that moment, and when Mr Szikora arrives he is certain, he is so certain, and the anger is so sudden and so hot that he doesn't even recognise the relief and triumph beside it until he tugs at the false beard to find that it's real and that Sherlock hasn't come after all.

And he's fucked up. Oh God, he's fucked up. He feels sick, the bile rising to his throat and he has no idea what to do because Sherlock hasn't come and this is John's fault, this is all his fault.

He is almost unaware of the day passing, almost incapable of focusing. He almost writes the wrong prescription out twice and actually calls Mr Simon “Sherlock” without even noticing until he looks over the see the puzzled look on the man's face. When Mary pages to ask him if he has time to take one more patient he says no. He shuts his office door and slumps at his desk, feeling even guiltier because he realises that the patient he turned down is just one more person he can't help.

“John?” Mary's voice comes through the intercom and he jumps. 

“Yeah?” he says. His heart is racing and he's unsure why.

“Just wanted to make sure you remembered we're going over the see Cath and Dennis tonight.”

He hasn't remembered. How could he have possibly remembered that? He doesn't even hesitate. “Shit. Er. Yeah, I completely forgot. I don't know if I'll be done here by then. Tell them I'm sorry, would you?”

There is a pause. It's tiny, this pause, but it's enough that he notices and when she speaks again he hears the tension in her voice that he hears sometimes when he comes home unexpectedly or walks into a room when she's on the phone and he's never known what it's meant even though he knows that it's there.

“Of course,” she says, “I know today wasn't easy. Just finish up and go home. Go to bed early. I'll be quiet when I come in.”

“Yeah. Thanks. Listen. I'm sorry, Mary.”

“It's fine,” she says and he can't read her tone but the line cuts off right after.

When Mary comes in two hours later he looks up from the file he's been staring at for the past fifteen minutes without seeing it and he forces himself to smile. She smiles back, all beautiful sympathy and it strikes him that this is the first time he's seen that expression on her face since Sherlock's return.

“You sure?”

And something about the way she says it, the expectation, the gentleness, and suddenly he realises that she knows. All day, probably since last night. Of course she knows. He wonders how long she's known because even he hadn't figured it out until just this second when she had looked at him with her eyes gone soft like she understood but she doesn't understand, how could she? Not even he understands, and he know he's always the stupidest person in the room but  _he's a doctor for God's sake._ He's a surgeon. He was a bloody  _good_ surgeon until that fucking bullet stole it from him, before the war destroyed his nerves, his sanity, his self. And now he's a GP looking at an actual adult male with undescended testicles for fuck's sake and vaginal thrush and everyone is cleverer than he is and no one, no one needs him for anything.

“I'm sure,” he says, because of course he's sure. Of course.

_He's going to see Sherlock._

How had he not realised this hours ago? The moment Mary is gone he's going to leave the office and take the tube to Baker Street and...and what? He has no idea. No idea. He doesn't care. 

“Okay. I'm late for Cath, I'll see you later.” She leans in for a kiss and he kisses her because that's what you do. That's what's done. But all he can think about is verdigris eyes and petulant lips turn down in a scowl.

“Bye,” he says, and she gives him a last smile, her face soft with sympathy.

“Bye,” she says, and his heart is beating loudly in his ears as the door shuts behind her.

 


	3. Three

The tube takes forever. It is crowded and hot with the press of bodies and breath. There is an elbow pressed into John's ribs and someone's bag is knocking into his back at every sway and rattle of the car. He hates the tube. Why did he take the tube?

He almost misses his stop, so focused on arriving, on seeing that polished black door, the brass knocker askew, the seventeen steps to the first floor. He is so intent on setting foot on that landing, the strains of the violin, the deep resonance of that voice demanding to know what took him so long, why he's just standing there on the top step and why he's not coming in. He can hear it, knows exactly how it will sound, because if there is nothing else that last night did for him, it at least filled the empty part of his memory where that voice was kept and forgotten.

The train pulls up at Baker Street and he fights his way to the door, following the crowds upwards. It is nearly dark, the blue sheen of dusk making the all the edges softer than they are, and he walks quickly. There is an uneasy prickle at the back of his neck, something creeping upwards from the base of his spine, and he knows this feeling, of being watched, of being tracked and hunted. He is distracted, intent on reaching Baker Street, on the black door and the brass knocker, but not so much as all that. He is two blocks away but he steps to the edge of the pavement and hails the first cab he sees. When he tells the driver where's he's going the man gives him an incredulous look.

“Look, just...please?” John says.

The man shrugs and John climbs in and as the cab pulls away from the kerb John can hear Sherlock's voice in his head, telling him that sensing danger is impossible, that the body doesn't work that way, that it's a conglomeration of minute observations coming together at the back of the mind to form an unconscious conclusion as to the state of one's surroundings. But John rolls his eyes because he knows that _reason_ doesn't account for everything. That it doesn't even account for most things.

It takes less than a minute before John is stopped in front of the door and he pulls out a twenty quid note and holds it up to the barrier.

“Do me a favour and wait till I'm inside, would you? If you don't see me waving to you from that window,” he points to the first floor window where there is months of memory stored in his head with Sherlock's silhouette framed by its edges. “If you don't see me there in three minutes, call the police. Yeah?”

The cabbie is beginning to look worried, but he sees the bill is John's hand and he nods and with a sense of walking out into the crossfire, John steps out onto Baker Street.

The distance between the kerb and the door seems very long. He's walked these exact steps more times than he can count, usually with a black coat sweeping ahead of him, but now his entire focus is on the world, on the man leaning against the building a block away, the second man walking towards him with a purposeful stride that makes something twinge at the back of John's subconscious. He immediately stops, turning towards the cabbie who is sitting with his window rolled down, and John leans down.

“I'm just going to talk to you for a second,” he says in a casual tone that doesn't carry further than the passenger seat inside the car. “Just nod, agree with me, yeah?”

The cabbie is looking terrified now and his eyes are darting from side to side but he nods, a quick up and down of his head and John smiles.

“Relax. Nothing's going to happen. The man coming from my right, just tell me when he's passed.”

The cabbie swallows, but he seems to gather some sort of courage from somewhere because John can see it settling on his face, a grim determination.

“He's slowed right down now. Should I call the police?”

“No, it won't do any good. He can't linger forever. Just tell me when he's six houses down. They won't try anything with witnesses.” John has no way of knowing whether or not this is true, but he thinks it is, the very fact that the man has slowed down speaks to that.

He already has his key out, the one that fits smoothly into the familiar lock. He's carries it with him everywhere. For eight hundred and seventy-three days he hasn't gone anywhere without it, and he leans against the door of the cab and waits while the cabbie's eye tracks the man behind him. It takes longer than it should, but very soon the cabbie gives a nod and John is moving, pushing himself off the car door and heading straight for that crooked brass knocker, those unforgettable numbers, the gleaming keyhole beneath the handle. It takes seconds, less than three and then the key is sliding home and he's aware of movement to his right, too close, faster than it should be and he can feel his heart beating as the key turns in the lock and the door jumps open and he's in, he's in, the glimpse of a frustrated face and then he is slamming the door and bolting it. He hears the squeal of tires from outside and he knows the cabbie has taken off and he's only glad that the man got away. He is breathing hard and his jaw is clenched, his forehead pressed to the cool wood. His heart is a too loud tympany in his ears and he can feel the blood rushing through him, too fast, too heavy. He realises that he is grinning and that he is trying very hard not to laugh.

“John?”

He turns, his face still split wide, the edges of hysteria and relief making him almost vibrate with their intensity. Mrs Hudson is standing in the doorway to her flat and staring at him. There is no approval on her face, it is hard and unimpressed.

“Hello, Mrs Hudson,” he says and his voice is too loud. “Just came to see Sherlock.”

“He's out. With that nice Molly girl.” The way she says it makes him think that her opinion of Molly doesn't include the word 'nice' at the moment and part of him feels bad for poor Molly because he knows it's only Mrs Hudson's inexplicable belief that he and Sherlock have been shagging for years, but most of him feels a stab of vindictive pleasure because he is picturing years and months of silence when a single word from her would have changed _everything._

He can feel his grin start to slip so he moves towards the first of the seventeen steps, needing to get out, to be alone for a minute, to just collect himself, pull all the tattered scraps together and tighten some of the threads that had started to pull loose eight hundred and seventy-three days ago when Sherlock had stood on the edge of that roof six storeys up and told him he had lied. “I'll just wait upstairs, shall I?” he says and he can tell Mrs Hudson wants to ask him to leave, that she's still angry about something, and he talks over her, shutting her down. “Oh and Mrs Hudson, I really wouldn't go out right now if I were you.” 

He leaves her gaping in the hallway as he climbs the seventeen steps upwards, one step at a time.

 

 


	4. Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every time I update this thing it just gets longer and longer.

The seventeen steps take forever to climb. It's like a tall building, a landmark that you see in the distance that looks like you could reach out and touch it but in reality turns out to be hours away.

When he does reach the top he is strangely out of breath, his heart hammering behind his ribs and his lungs heaving in his chest. He thinks he may be having a panic attack and he stops on the top landing, two steps away from the kitchen door, and bends over with his hands on his knees, trying to find something to hold onto.

He feels his chest expanding and he concentrates on the feel of the air rushing through his trachea and down into his lungs, imagines the oxygen being filtered out and distributed, into the blood and through the heart, filling muscle and tendon and sparking through his brain. He pictures it, the roar of it through artery and vein, the pulse of mitral and tricuspid, aortic and pulmonary. It is beautiful, this engine of the body, the poetry of life, and it calms him, grounds him, reminds him that it is chemicals and machinery, the workings of a well-constructed motor.

And when he's calm, he straightens again and stares at the door ahead of him. He considers the sitting room, but somehow the kitchen seems easier, less threatening, and with two steps he reaches it and turns the knob and he is in.

It is exactly as he remembers it from two days ago, when he had stood in this place choked with dust and grief and told Mrs Hudson that he was getting married. Nothing has changed except that the dust is gone and John can imagine the argument that must have sprung up from that. But otherwise it's unchanged, still the sterile neatness from when he was dead. He remembers the litter of papers and half finished notes, the tests tubes and vials, the body parts and the random weapons, and he has to remind himself that he did not imagine last night, that it was real, that it's only been a day and of course Sherlock hasn't had time to put everything back. Of course he hasn't managed to make a mess yet. Even Sherlock has his limits.

He turns from the kitchen and steps into the sitting room and it's like being punched in the stomach and abruptly he finds himself kneeling on the floor, his head between his knees, and he hates himself, he hates that this can be done to him, that he's let this be done to him, because this doesn't happen to normal people. Normal people don't have their best friends rise from the dead. They don't get these second chances that he's not even sure he is able to handle because here he is, on his knees and re-learning how to breathe because of a dressing gown thrown over the back of chair.

His chair. Sherlock's. Cracked black leather and central indent, the wear at the outer edge of the seat where shod feet have left their mark. It's not even the same dressing gown that John remembers but a new one, an earthy tan that seems like such an odd choice for Sherlock that John can't even understand why he would have chosen it.

He forces himself to breathe, to slow down. He finds his anchor in the sound of his own blood, and when he can move again he pushes himself upright, clutching at the back of his own red chair, the feel of its fibres utterly known under his clutching fingers, and he pulls himself around until he is able to collapse into it, his body finding its familiar groove as if it had never left, as if eight hundred and seventy-three days had never happened.

He has no idea what to do, how long he has to wait, but he doesn't care. He is numb. His mind has ground to a standstill and he stares at the tan dressing gown over the black chair and can't think of anything except that he is here, he is waiting, and Sherlock is alive.

He has no idea if he even believes it, if he _wants_ to believe it, because what if this is just a trick, another hallucination of a mind tortured beyond bearing. But every time he feels the fear creep in, the doubt that he's not sure he'll ever get over, though fifty years pass with Sherlock sitting in the chair across from him and scowling for his cigarettes, John sees that dressing gown and knows, knows that this is real, that only hours before that dressing gown was warm with the heat of a living body.

He doesn't even understand how it can be true but he doesn't care. He doesn't even care. Because everything in him _needs_ it to be.

He has no idea how long he sits there, for how many minutes or hours he is staring at that dressing gown while the machinery of his heart keeps time. He is aware of the light shifting, of the darkening of the room, the glide of headlights on the ceiling. His entire body is tensed and waiting, just waiting, and so when he hears the click of the front door, almost impossibly loud in his head, he actually starts and it's like suddenly waking up.

It is dark and John has no idea how long he's been sitting here but he can hear the sound of wool brushing the landing wall, the tap of expensive shoes on the wooden steps. His heart is beating along with each footfall and he notices immediately that they are being taken one at a time instead of skipping every second step like Sherlock always does and John's first thought is that he is hurt, that something has happened.

He is out of chair in a single movement, spinning around to face the door so that he actually sees when Sherlock first appears, pale faced and tired looking, a paper basket of fish and chips that he is slowly picking at in his hand. His lip is swollen and scabbed and John feels a stab of remorse and anger both because he still has no idea whether Sherlock deserved it or not. 

But today, calmer than he was, John can see the way Sherlock is holding himself, the careful tension of his shoulders and carried through his hips and John knows what that means. The doctor in him is screaming, urging him forward, demanding that every inch of white skin and jutting bone is probed and inspected and soothed. But the rest of him is still frozen, wide-eyed and terrified, utterly unable to process the meaning in the beats of his heart, the air in his lungs. In this moment, even more than last night, John realises that Sherlock is alive.

And that's when Sherlock looks up and sees him, and John can see the way his shoulders hitch as his breath catches and the widening of eyes the same colour as oxidised copper, pupils huge and black. He can see the moment when the chips are forgotten and Sherlock takes a half step forward, his lips already shaping the name. 

His name.

“John.”

And John knows that he is alive.

 


	5. Five

“John.”

John doesn't know what he wants to say. He's angry and he's hurt and he's afraid and he's filled with guilt. _He doesn't know what to say._ He is looking at Sherlock closely, tracing every new line, every added wrinkle, the way he's leaner and more muscular at the same time, the pain tensing his shoulders and creating tracks in his face. But it's the bag of fish and chips in his hand that makes John step forward, his heart racing, because he's lost, he's lost. He has no idea who this man is.

“You're alive.”

He doesn't know why he says it. It's stupid. It's utterly stupid. He's waiting for the derision, the mockery, the quirk of the eyebrow and the quick snap of _obviously_ as if it were cut off from the end of a tirade.

But it doesn't come. Sherlock just looks at him, something complicated on his face, and this is the most frightening thing of all.

“I swear to God, if you tell me you're dying—” John starts and he is trying to hold back tears because he doesn't want to cry, he refuses to cry.

Sherlock laughs, a quick cut off bark, and his mouth is twisting, doing something that is somewhere between trying not to laugh and trying not to cry. “No,” he says. “No, not dying. Unless you kill me.”

“Don't be an arse.”

“You tried last night.”

“You deserved it last night.”

They stare at each other, six feet away, nothing separating them but a bag of fish and chips that John wants to snatch away and hurl at the wall because it's the biggest anomaly yet, this foreign object in Sherlock's wide palm.

He keeps staring at it, he can't help it. He hates it, he didn't think it was possible to hate deep fried food with this much passion but he knows he will never be able to eat fish and chips ever again after this.

He tears his eyes away from the grease stained paper and looks up to find Sherlock looking back, his own eyes flickering between John and the food in his hand as if he's trying to decipher some kind of meaning from it and John can't help it. He can't help it. He starts to laugh.

He has no idea where it comes from, what's wrong with him, but it only takes a second before Sherlock starts to chuckle, the low rumbling baritone from the deep cavity of his chest and John remembers it,  _oh God he remembers,_ and it hits him just like that. That he is standing in 221B and laughing with Sherlock and he realises with a sudden pitch of hysterical terror that he can't stop, he may never stop, dragging air up from his belly until he's doubled over, his hands on the arm of his chair for support. The muscles in his stomach ache and he gasps for breath, tears running down his face and he just can't stop.

He is aware of Sherlock six paces away, collapsed in the doorway and clutching at it for support. The fish and chips are on the floor, fallen from their packing and scattered. The sound of Sherlock's loud rumbling laughter is unbelievable, the most incredible sound that John has ever heard because until last night he didn't think he would ever hear it again, had relegated that sound to the parts of his memory that only resurfaced in dreams, fading to forgetfulness with every morning. There are tears running down his face and he isn't even sure what they're from anymore.

Through the blur of his eyes he can see Sherlock, kneeling now on the floor, still laughing but with a hand carefully pressed to his ribs in a way that has nothing to do with amusement, and just like that John is in control, laughter vanishing, the last giggle swallowed and he is moving towards Sherlock, who is kneeling on the floor and crying.

He is on his knees at his side in an instant, hands running over him, starting with his skull, fingers threading through hair and pressing into bone. He slides them down his neck, pressing gently at his throat, before they are on his shoulders and then his chest, pushing and testing, feeling for his pulse, the rise of his chest, the rasp of his breath. When he comes to the ribcage Sherlock flinches and John can feel the faint crepsis of the seventh rib and the guilt he feels is almost crippling. He remembers the night before and he wants to vomit.

“No,” Sherlock says, and he's breathing hard but he's stopped crying. He is staring at John, his face pale, his eyes bruised, his expression broken, and still he can see what John is thinking, knows exactly what is happening when even John is still unsure.

“No, it wasn't you,” Sherlock says. “It wasn't you. This is from before.”

“Before what?” John snaps but his hands are moving again, running down Sherlock's back and he feels the raised weals, the bulkier spots where bandages have been applied and he wants to hurt someone, wants to punish them, wants to find who did this and he wants to destroy them, tear them apart with his teeth, feel their blood pooling under his nails.

“Jesus, Sherlock. Jesus Christ,” and Sherlock is crying again, soft muffled sounds that are too much like whimpers and John has no idea what to do, has no idea how to fix this, make it better, because it's not the wounds that are making him cry. It has nothing to do with blood and bone. He takes Sherlock's head again, holds it between the palms of his hands and feels the curls wrapping around his fingers. He needs to fix this, he needs to fix this. He stares Sherlock, eyes almost grey now, too light with the tears in them and John moves his thumb under them, tracing the wetness with his own skin, trying to erase it.

“Tell me,” he says. “Tell me what to do. I will do it. I will find them and I will make them regret every breath they have ever taken. But I swear to God, Sherlock Holmes, if you ever leave me again, if you ever,  _ever_ do anything like that again, I will find you and kill you myself. Do you understand? Can you even come close to understanding?”

Sherlock stares at him, grey eyes wide and so irrevocably broken, but he's stopped crying at least. He's staring at John as if he's only seeing something for the first time, like the ocean or the world from on top of a mountain, something obvious and overwhelming and forever. “John,” he says, that single syllable, like it means something, like it matters, and John can see the intent in his eyes, sees him broadcasting it from barely six inches away and John, kneeling across from him on the floor with his hands tangled in his hair, does nothing to stop it, doesn't even flinch as Sherlock leans in and kisses him.

 


	6. Six

Sherlock's lips are hard and firm and soft, so incredibly soft. He is pressing forward, testing, a finger reaching for the fire to see if it's hot. John wants to push forward, wants to throw him to the ground and grind into him because he is already hard, his cock responding instantly to that first brush of lips. He has dreamt of this. For years. Soft imaginary sighs in the night, a hand that wasn't his, the tentative press of fingers in unfamiliar places. He has wanted this longer than he has let himself believe and he has believed it for a long time. But this...this is real. This is a real, _touchable_ Sherlock whose lips are now moving cautiously against his, trying to discover, to understand. That noise he made actually belonged to him, that tiny questioning groan at the back of his throat, and for once not just a part of John's imagination. This Sherlock is _absolute,_ a tangible part of the waking world. _Sherlock is alive and kissing him._

John has no idea how he's going to keep this up, this pretence of patience. He wants to absorb him, wrap himself up in him, pull him so close that the cells of their bodies are rubbing against each other. He is shaking with the effort of holding back, with the knowledge that this is happening, with the certainty that Sherlock is actually here.

He would have settled for less. He could have. He would have gone back to how they were if it meant never losing Sherlock again. But now it is beyond that, and John knows that if Sherlock were to pull back now, say _no,_ say _John I've changed my mind,_ John would...he would...he doesn't know. _He doesn't know._ He would go back to Mary and lie there every night for the rest of his life listening to the groan in his mind, feel the ghost sensation of firm lips on his own. He would look at the woman beside him and know that he is lying to her, that any affection he had once felt had burnt up instantly in the conflagration of Sherlock's sigh.

Even as he thinks it he feels Sherlock pulling back, the heat of his lips sliding away and John can't...he can't...

His eyes are shut, lids tightly pressed together. He doesn't want to see, he can't. He can picture it so clearly. Regret. Pity. Disdain.

He is on his feet before he knows that he's moved, propelled across the room and away from Sherlock, away from a face he can't even look at. He is panicking again, can feel the pressure building behind his ribs. He can't breathe, _he can't breathe._

“John.”

That voice, wrecked, and John can almost hear it in his imagination, Sherlock groaning into his ear, and it's not real _it's not real_ and John is so _angry._ Because Sherlock knows, he _knows_ . He has always known and he has always ignored it and denied it and rejected it and now John can't even think because how could he have expected anything different from the man who sprawled himself on the pavement and pretended to be dead.  _How could he have been tricked by this again?_

“John!”

John turns on him and he is panting, dragging the air into his lungs and forcing himself to breathe.

“You,” he says and his voice is utterly controlled, utterly dead. “You know. _You know._ Don't you dare—”

He stops. He can't speak. He can't even begin to say the words because the humiliation is almost unbearable, the pain actually physical.

“John, God's sake, will you listen?”

“Do you have any idea—” Again he has to stop. The words are clogging up in his throat and he can feel them there, choking him, unable to get out and just as incapable of being swallowed again.

Sherlock is pushing himself to his feet and he is struggling. John sees the flinch at the catch in his broken rib and he makes himself stay still, forces himself not to move because this is it. He knows this is it. He can't...he can't...He imagine himself going back to Croyden, walking up those steps and feeling how wrong each and every single one of them are. He imagines opening the door and entering a flat that has never been his, that never will be his. He imagines Mary, smiling serenely as she glances up from her book on the sofa and he will smile back because he has to, because this is all he has left and he doesn't know what will happen to him if he loses this too.

“Sherlock. Jesus. I would have done anything. _I would have done anything.”_

He needs to get out. He is breaking, the pieces crumbling off from around the edges and he knows it's only so long till the centre loses all support and falls, beating naked on the ground.

He pushes forward but Sherlock is there, blocking the way, his hands out and gripping John's arms and John wants to throw him, wants to flail and scream and collapse. But he doesn't, and Sherlock's arms are there, sliding around him, pulling him close, dragging him in and John tries to shout but it comes out as a moan, half swallowed by the thin chest he is pushing into.

“Stop, stop. John. God's sake, just stop.”

“I hate you. I hate you. Jesus Christ, Sherlock. I can't do this anymore.”

“Do what?”

And something in John snaps, some tenuous thread of control that has been fraying for years, that in the space of eight hundred and seventy-three days has been worn to a single tattered strand and it just can't hold him up any longer. He gives a snarl and he _pushes_ and Sherlock flinches back and all John needs is that space, those few inches and then he is kissing him, fiercely and hungrily, years worth of hope, of despair, of frustration, of rage, spilling out and drowning him. And he is so _hungry,_ he is devouring Sherlock with his teeth, his tongue, his lips, sucking and biting and pulling and dragging and it is wet and hot and John tastes oil and salt, vinegar and blood. And somewhere, at some point, John has realised that Sherlock is kissing back.

He snarls, the sound rising from some place he had long since buried, the same place he kept all of Sherlock's imaginary groans and the hand that wasn't his and the exploring fingers that if he closed his eyes just tight enough he could pretend, _he could pretend._

But he doesn't need to pretend anymore. Sherlock is sighing and groaning and every sound is like a minor shock that jolts through John and leaves him numb and oversensitive all at once. He bites down on the cut he had made last night and Sherlock gives a growl, a low animal sound that John will have replaying in his head every single day for the rest of his life.

He doesn't even realise that they've moved until Sherlock's thighs have hit the sofa and he falls back and for the briefest of moments John's arms are empty and he stares down at Sherlock, sprawled backwards over the armrest, his face flushed and his mouth open and red. There is blood trickling down from the cut on Sherlock's lip and his eyes are almost black. Sherlock stares at John, panting heavily, a guttural sound, something groin-deep and demanding slipping from between his lips and he looks so foiled, so frustrated. The front of his trousers are tented and John can see the unconscious movement of Sherlock's hips, the desperate search for friction. John can imagine it, the long hard line of his cock straining upwards and John wants to know what it looks like, what it feels like, how it tastes. He wants it in him and on him and he knows that this is it, this is the moment that he stops being Mary's.

“Jesus Christ,” John says and stares with wonder. The rage has left him, leaving nothing but urgency in its wake, and when the words leave him they are broken. “You do not get to leave me," he says, and knows he is too close to the edge of something. "You do not get to disappear, not ever again. Not ever, Sherlock.”

“I won't," Sherlock says. "I won't, John. Just get down here," and his hips strain upwards, trying to find relief against the zip of his trousers and the sound that John makes isn't even human.

John is on top of him in an instant and they are grappling with each other, tearing at coats, at shirts. There is the pop of buttons pinging against the table and the back of the sofa and John's chest is bared, then Sherlock's, a medley of old scars and too much rib.

“Every single one,” John growls, tracing his tongue along the rough edges of a badly healed knife wound that is at least two years old, and he thinks _four months. You would have been gone for four months when this happened._ “You are going to tell me what every single bloody scar is from and I am going to tell you exactly how I would have stopped each one from happening.”

Then they are kissing again and John is pressed down on top of him, the line of Sherlock's ribs a point of pressure against his own abdomen, too sharp. Sherlock's tongue is deep in John's mouth and John is clamped around it, and it is messy and inelegant and John doesn't care. He suckles at it, wanting to feel the reverberations of Sherlock's low possessive moans carrying to base of his skull.

John is grinding down and he feels the jut of hipbones too exposed and dimly he thinks that they need to be careful, that they need to slow down and stop and make sure everything is alright, but Sherlock's arms are tight around John, his legs twisted over John's and holding him down. The jagged edges of bony hips buck against him and John is trying to cry out, trying to make a sound but Sherlock is swallowing every moan he gives away.

When he is finally able to pull back, it is to feel Sherlock's rumbling protest, vibrating against his chest, and John sits back, straddling the long legs, trying to breathe.

"Your ribs," he says.

"Shut up, John," Sherlock pants, and his fingers are already scrambling at belts and flies and trousers and Sherlock is beautiful, he is so beautiful, and John can't even breathe because he wants this so badly.

"This is mad," John gasps, and his own hands join Sherlock's, pawing and dragging at all the clothing that is suddenly too much. His fingers are shaking, clumsy, and when he finally manages to drag Sherlock's trousers away it feels like an accomplishment. Sherlock's hips are lifted and straining and John doesn't even try to make this last. He reaches for the edge of Sherlock's pants and he stares, because he can't believe that those are his hands, that this is him who's doing this, that's he's awake, that Sherlock is alive. Too many improbabilities all lining up in a row and John is terrified of waking up, of opening his eyes to see the dark ceiling in Croyden with Mary breathing deeply beside him.

“Oh my God,” he says, because he wants this so badly he doesn't understand how it could have even happened.

“John, come _on!"_

And John lifts the elastic waist of Sherlock's pants, black and silk and ridiculous and he can barely hold onto them his hands are shaking so badly but it doesn't even matter because Sherlock suddenly gives a cry, something far down and guttural, and he comes, soaking the edge of the silk and spattering his stomach and John stares at it, at Sherlock, this mess they've created between them.

"Shit," Sherlock gasps, and gives a groan of half-frustrated laughter that makes him wince at the sudden jolt of pain in his ribs.

"I can't believe you—" John starts to say, but Sherlock doesn't let him finish. Drags John down and kisses him and it is such a different kiss from before, longing and comforting and wanting and Sherlock moans against John's lips and John feels Sherlock's arms sliding around him, gently at first but then firmly, clutching at the back of John's shirt, the material bunching under fisted hands, before sliding lower, finding the cheeks of John's arse and squeezing.

John can feel the wet spot on Sherlock's stomach soaking through cotton pants and he is achingly aware of his own erection, straining and pressing into the heat of Sherlock's belly below him. He reaches a hand between them and Sherlock's hands are moving down, too, long fingers finding the crease of John's arse and slipping between, and John is already panting, the too-hot press of someone else's flesh against his own. He starts to rut and he feels the slickness of Sherlock's come and he knows this is such a terrible idea, that neither of them have been tested, that he doesn't know anything about Sherlock's past, but he doesn't care, he doesn't even care, he is thrusting against the warm belly below him and Sherlock's fingers are sliding lower, finding that dark place between John's thighs, and Sherlock's voice is crooning in his ear. Just his name. Just _John,_ over and over and over again and John has dreamt of that voice, his name, murmured in just that tone and it's like something shatters and he is coming, _he is coming,_ shouting Sherlock's name into the crook of his neck while he shudders through his orgasm, Sherlock's hands tight and warm against his body.

They are panting, breathing into each other, and John feels the rush of blood slowly begin to ease, the thunderous echo of Sherlock's heartbeat start to calm. He should move. He thinks of Sherlock's rib, of the mess they made between them, but Sherlock arms are clasped tightly still around him and part of him is still in denial, still terrified to look up and find this all a dream.

“John.”

John sighs, buries his face against Sherlock's. He leaves a line of kisses down that jaw that he hadn't thought he would ever see again and he feels Sherlock lean into him.

“John,” Sherlock says again and John hears the uncertainty in it and he doesn't want to look up, he doesn't want uncertainty, he doesn't know what to do with it anymore because there is nothing about this that is not certain, nothing he does not know.

“What is it?” he mutters into Sherlock's neck and he hopes that Sherlock doesn't hear, that nothing ever changes.

“I'm sorry.”

John frowns, feels the drag of his forehead against the faint beginning of stubble on Sherlock's jaw. He finally looks up and he stares at that face, still flushed and quiet from sex, and he tries to read what's behind it.

“I'm sorry,” Sherlock says again, and there's exasperation there now, clearly waiting for some sort of acknowledgement.

John isn't even sure how to process that. “For...what exactly? The incredible shag?"

John can almost feel the world shift, the universe sliding back to normal when Sherlock rolls his eyes. "For leaving. Idiot." And then quieter, almost inaudible, "For leaving you."

And John thinks of blood on the pavement, of years and months, of giving up and barely holding on. "I know," he says, and he doesn't say it's okay. He can't say it, because it's not. Not yet. But he knows, eventually, that it will be. "I know," he says again, then burying his face back into the crook of Sherlock's neck he says, "Angelo's?" And Sherlock's huff of laughter is a breath against his ear. Real and unimagined. _Sherlock._

"Yeah," he says. "Okay."


End file.
